A year or so back, there was a tip (in FWW) by Jimmy Carter on sharpening jointer blades in-situ. I did not pay much attention at the time, as I did not own a jointer, I have now acquired an old one with
3 sets of blades, 1 set is OK, just, but the other 2 are worse for wear.What was his technique?
Barry Lennox
A sharpening service.
There is a hand held hone that one can use to touch up jointer blades. You can buy them from all the usual places, e.g. HD, LV, etc. If by "worse for wear" you mean that they have nicks and flat spots, take/send them to a professional sharpening service. mahalo, jo4hn
:)
I recall several FWW issues w/ Jimmy in them in various forms, but nothing re: sharpening jointer knives...
I'll concur w/ the other posters--unless they only need a very light touch up, unless you can set up a good jig to ensure maintaining a completely straight edge and have a slow speed water wheel, grinding them yourself is, while not impossible, error prone at best--and that's assuming they're steel, not carbide.
Best to find a good sharpening service--but be sure they know what they're doing--I once took a set to a fool who ground them by hand into a nice set of hollow paint scrapers... :(
There are, of course, for larger jointers (typically 8" and up) "on the machine" sharpening setups--the older 8" and larger Delta's for one have drilled/tapped holes in the outfeed bed for mounting the carriage mechanism. I don't know whether the new Deltas have that as a feature/option or not?
Incidentally, I used Ridge
When I attended the University of Houston (back when woodworking was taught in Texas schools), our woodworking teacher used a jig on the TS to sharpen jointer blades. He mounted a thin stone on the TS arbor & used a wood jig with the blade mounted in it to slide the jointer blade across the stone. The jig was a sawkerf in a 2 x, with the blade held in place with screws crimping the sawkerf onto the blade. The jig with blade was slid along another board clamped securly to the TS table. I believe the jig sawkerf was parallell to the tabletop. The angle cut into the blade was dependent on the height of the stone relative to the top. If you try this, make sure all the sawdust is removed from under your saw first-- no sense in starting a fire. PH
He recommended using a hand sander to clean the blades up in-situ. Cheers, cc
way way back when I was doing a Technical Teaching course (wood and metal work for high school) we used to touch up blades by backing a sharpening stone from the outfeed table over the blades and lowering the outfeed table until the stone was just in contact with the blades. (There was a jig to clamp the stone to the table)
Not recommended today for safety reasons.
He recommended using a palm sander to touch up the blade, while holding the head still with vise-grips. I think he said he got the tip from Menachim Begin.
Glenn
Haha, that's funny. But thanks, I'll give it a try. I also have another method I found in FWW's "Woodworking Machinery" That uses a small grindstone in a router, with a metal tongue to hold the blades in a constant position.
Barry
orbital sander.
no way I'm doing that to my jointer blades.
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